bittersweet symphony
(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)
12: hunter
It is cold in Hades.
That is her first thought, and it surprises her. She doesn't know how long she had stood in that waiting room with all the other ghosts milling about. She asked them questions, but they didn't respond, no matter the language. They had lost all initiative, any curiosity at all that they might have had. All they cared about now was getting out, going beyond, down the river to their rest at long last.
And after those endless, tedious hours of elevator music and uncomfortable chairs, that is where she is going now. Oh, singers, let's go down...down to the valley to pray. Does anyone pray here? There are no altars, nothing to indicate the positive answer. Her hands holding the wooden rail of the riverboat, she leans over to watch the debris in the polluted River of Death float by her. She wonders, as each object goes past, who had dropped it, how much it had cost them to finally admit that they were giving up their greatest dreams.
A golden crucifix, halfway eroded, drifts past, followed by a soggy Master's degree in philosophy and theology. A nun, a priest, a monk...who knows? There are flowers of every color imaginable, all stained by the dark death in the waters. Books float on the water, sketchbooks and notebooks and date planners. Cell phones and iPods bob along in a current, spinning and dancing. Records whirl about like smaller discuses, and the old plume of a centurion's helmet swims along.
But beyond these are some things that even she cannot view without a touch of sentimentality, of sorrow, of regret. Not for anything she had done, but for the owners of the objects she saw: a family photo, a dog collar, a camera, scraps of paper with dreams written all over them. A sunshine barret that drifted slowly down the stream. A doll with red yarn for hair and wide blue eyes, her once-white apron trimmed with lace, her fingers chewed on by nervous four-year-old teeth. A blanket, covered in multicolored polka dots.
And then she realizes that now it is her turn to contribute, her turn to place her greatest dream, her greatest hope, her greatest desire in that dark, cold, dead river. This is the hard part. It is not admitting that she is dead to those whom she sees; it is admitting that she is dead to herself. It is admitting that all of those dreams are something that can never, ever be achieved by her. Never - such a small word, she thinks. It is bigger than thousands of eternities combined, because if you have eternity you can achieve some small thing, but if you have never you can do naught.
Slowly, her hands shaking, she is lowering her sacred silver bow into that cold water. Physically, she knows what she is doing; but mentally, she can feel so many layers being stripped away. Those layers protected her from herself, from her feelings and pain and utter anguish. And so she drops her arrows, she drops her years as a Hunter, she drops the love of her Lady, she drops part of her soul - and then she is left with her tears and her mistakes, because she cannot find a place for them in the river.
She can see the Fields of Asphodel coming up, and she thinks of how dreary it will be, how painful, to stand in a trampled, darkened field for all of eternity. But at the same time, she thinks: peace. There she might find peace to rest, at long last. But what if she tired of rest? What then?
And then, beyond the Fields of Torment, she spies the golden gates of Elysium and the shining Islands of the Blest, and she knows her course. She can feel something tiny spring up inside of her torn soul, and she knows that she has just found the last remnant of Pandora's gift. She has had all of the pain and suffering and horror brought by that golden box, so long ago; she thought that she had left her own box open a bit too long, and that that one last gift had left and gone. But it hadn't, because now that she had opened the box again she had found it - small and nearly crushed at the very bottom, but it was there.
Hope springs eternal in her broken, tattered, ancient soul, and she knows that her never has become her eternity. She can hope again. She can dream. She will return to her Lady and her troop, and she will make her choice again.
Zoe Nightshade turns her back on the River Styx and faces the places of Judgement, determined - a Hunter once again.
